Rakesh Wadhwa:

That's after the initial shock of this event, everybody seems to be talking about pivoting. So how necessary is that or does it make more sense to keep focused on your core competencies and the business and try to make it more efficient and relevant?

 

Tom Peters:

To give a simple answer - silly. I want to make today's business, so incredibly good that I will hold onto my customers. And I mean, I don't know what a pivot is. It's a big word. Let me go back to my appliance person. In the world of appliances. And I assuming at least in the urban areas in India, the same thing is true, the appliances are getting smarter and there is this term, which I, again, I'm sorry. I don't know whether it's universal, but it is called in the American words, the internet of things. And that means smart refrigerators, smart ranges, and so on. And so here is this gentleman, hardly a rich man who has an appliance repair company with about 12 employees. Well, he just got back and this was to be honest, the teeny bit before COVID, he took, at great expense a two week course to teach him about the internet of things. So I don't think he's focused on a pivot. I don't like pivot. Pivot is blow up everything and do something differently. He is focused on, to use an old fashioned term, modernizing his appliance service businesses to a significant degree. There's a wonderful woman by the name of Linda Kaplan. And she started her own advertising agency. She's in the advertising hall of fame, all of that good stuff. And I read a book of hers and at the beginning of the book, she said, I have had an incredibly successful company. We have done, we think great work for our clients and they must think so too. I have never had a longterm plan. I am never had a strategy. I have never had a vision. The only thing I'm interested in is during the next 60 minutes, doing the best job that I can do for our customers and for my people so that they can do the best job for our customers. So I come down pretty heavily on, of course you pay attention to the new technology. Of course you imagine things. I want you to make a jillion new products, but I want those products to be the best.

On June the sixth, 1944, there was what was called an Indian troops were part of this as well, D-Day and that was when the allies landed on the beach at French in France, and started to push the Germans back. The person who commanded all the American troops. Was a general by the name of Omar Bradley and General Bradley's quote, which I use all the time was this and listen to my words, carefully – Amateurs talk about strategy. Professionals talk about logistics. You can have a clever as to how you're going to conquer the world in 2028 strategy in the world. If the bullets don't get to the store soldiers, when they land on the beach three hours from now, it is all the biggest joke in the world. And a lot of soldiers are going to die.